Hyperhomocysteinemia (HHcy, a clinical condition with elevated levels of homocysteine (Hcy) in human blood) is associated with various acute health disorders. HHcy has been considered as one of the possible cause of developing cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), brain atrophy, cognitive impairment, renal dysfunction and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Detection of these diseases at early stages and appropriate monitoring of therapeutics will certainly enable to improve the life standards of any patient. Despite recent progresses in fighting with these fatal diseases, the best approach for achieving an early stage cost-effective diagnosis that will be operative in low-resource settings remained unsuccessful. In view of this, a major drive for developing point-of-care (POC) assay for measuring plasma Hcy could facilitate early detection of CVD and MCI as well as individualized therapy monitoring. Hcy is a sulphur containing, non-essential amino acid which is a metabolite of the essential amino acid methionine. The metabolic pathway of Hcy is guided by various enzymes and cofactors, deficiency of which can lead to anomalous accumulation of Hcy. Normal level of tHcy ranges between 5-15 µM, tHcy levels ≥15 µM, ≥30 µM and ≥100 µM indicates moderate, intermediate and severe conditions of HHcy, respectively. Therefore, demand for plasma Hcy testing for determination of HHcy got increased momentum in recent times. However, global healthcare diagnostics market is yet to offer any solution for direct optical measurement of Hcy in human plasma. Herein, a series of water soluble optical sensors has been developed, which displays turn-on response towards Hcy. EPR and UV-vis studies has established reduction-induced-emission-enhancement of the sensor for its off-to-on behavior with Hcy. Validation using traditional HPLC and reliability against clinically approved commercial immunoassay kit confirms the diagnostic potential of the optical sensor. The presented optical sensor demonstrates the feasibility for the development of Hcy-selective diagnostic kit to be suitable for point-of-care uses.

Reduction induced emission enhancement based point-of-care assay for hyperhomocysteinemia

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.